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For the first time in more than three decades veteran Fairfield teacher Kim Nuxhall won’t go into the gymnasium at Central Elementary School when classes resume next month.

After 32 years of teaching physical education at the same school, Nuxhall, a 1972 Fairfield High School graduate, has retired.

“There is never an easy time to leave,’’ Nuxhall said of his July retirement. “This was a good time. I had an outstanding year and great kids.”

Nuxhall said he had been thinking about retiring – “I had to cut back on something” – but hadn’t decided when he would leave. When the board of education cut teaching positions in a cost-saving measure, Nuxhall’s decision was made.

“By my leaving, someone else got to keep their job,” he said.

Retiring doesn’t mean Nuxhall plans to walk away from Central. Mr. Whiner and Mrs. Serious will continue to make periodic appearances on Central’s morning announcements. And he says he will come back for visits.

“Mr. Whiner is their favorite. It was a great way to get them to think about themselves and their actions,’’ Nuxhall said.

Known for his passion for character education – he heads the Joe Nuxhall Character Education Foundation – Superintendent Cathy Milligan said he will be missed.

“Kim respected children and believed in their capacity for self-discipline. My favorite strategy of his was the sign which accompanied his whistle around his neck. It read: ‘Please discipline yourself so I don’t have to,’ Milligan said.

“He believed in teaching children the character virtues which lead to success, then modeling those virtues for them, and believing in their capacity to rise to the occasion – which they always did in Kim’s classroom.”

During his tenure, Nuxhall painted words up the bleacher steps in the gymnasium: respect, honor, peace, kindness, wisdom, self-control – a different message all the way up. He put up quotes and messages on the walls, always encouraging kids to be honorable and people of character.

That role, he says, will continue when teacher Peggy Day comes from the middle school to take over the PE classes.

What he will miss the most, he said, are the kids and watching them grow and mature. The first children he taught are now in their 40s. He estimates he’s taught more than 8,000 children since he started teaching at Central in 1978.

“One of the neat things is watching the kids grow up, watching them go from first to fourth grade,” Nuxhall said.

Summer travel plans include a trip to San Francisco for the National Character Education Foundation and a trip to catch up with an old roommate from his days as a minor league pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds before he became a teacher.

He plans to continue to run the character education foundation he founded, work on getting fields baseball fields built for special needs children/adults and a gymnasium addition built at Fairfield One Way Farm for children, a project started by his late father, longtime Cincinnati Reds announcer Joe Nuxhall.

Though Nuxhall says there is nothing that can fill the kid void, he has developed a retirement motto: “I have roses to smell.”